Day 45: PART I - Do you know the way to San Jose?

It should take about three hours to get from our home to the airport. We decided to give ourselves two extra hours, just in case the roads happened to be gone or some other act of nature caused a delay. We left at 7am to pick Matt up at noon. We made it to the airport five hours later – right on time, taking two hours longer than expected.

Fortunately the roads were all there although there was evidence of some landslide action along the route. The first delay occurred when a Coca Cola tractor trailer derailed on a sharp curve up the winding trail that lead to the airport. After being parked for fifteen minutes, we were finally able to pass through the one open lane. In the middle of our journey through the mountainous peaks and valleys, we found ourselves cutting through one of the largest cities we’ve seen so far, San Isidro, and had our next delay; a detour when the road unexpectedly became a One Way without warning. Fortunately we avoided an accident and took a bathroom break at the first McDonald’s we’ve seen since we’ve been in Costa Rica. Then we were back to climbing more mountains with views of valleys dotted with isolated homes and farm animals. We went through as many temperature changes as scenery. We had to actually roll up the windows but still kept them open so we could breathe fresh dry air, not steam. I’m pretty sure at the highest point of our journey, we had the same views as Matt as we drove through and above the clouds.

Other than delays like bus stops on major highways, the real delay was our arrival in San Jose, a place that both lived up and down to our expectations. There were too many cars, not enough signs, and zero time to figure out where we needed to go. We just got pushed along with the traffic and hoped a sign would be around the next congested intersection. No luck. We finally resorted to asking other drivers. To the left, a taxi driver who claimed he didn’t know where the airport was (really?), to the right, the nicest driver in the city. After realizing he wasn’t going to be able to explain in a language we’d understand before the light turned green (hand signals weren’t going to work with this one), he responded “follow me.” We let him pull in front of us and took his word that he’d get us to where we needed to go without forgetting and guiding us to his house. He navigated us out of the overwhelming downtown traffic and onto the highway that had finally directed us to the airport. At around the same time, Matt was able to navigate through airport customs and the swarm of taxi drivers in his face. We found him pretty easily once he made his way past the crowd and were on our way to Volcan Arenal, one of the top ten most active volcanoes in the world for some possible eruptions, lava sightings and hot springs.